[staunch]

It's usually a bad sign when teams pawn off their maintenance work on new people. It means that they have no intention of actually fixing the system (or replacing it) because it's easier to just keep rolling the shit downhill.

If it doesn't feel better in a couple months, definitely consider quitting. You'd probably be happier on almost any other team.

Edit: downvoted by people who pawn off their crapwork on the newbies :P

[facorreia]

I usually assign simple, low priority maintenance task to new team members so they can start to learn the codebase, the tools and the process.

Once they get those first few simple issues done, they're quickly assigned increasingly more complex issues.

[staunch]

Whatever helps them get acclimated is fine. The problem is taking projects no one wants to do and forcing the new person to do it without help.